


You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess (baby just say yes)

by dutchmoxie



Category: Cassandra Palmer Series - Karen Chance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood Friends, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 17:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12017778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchmoxie/pseuds/dutchmoxie
Summary: Cassie Palmer is four years old when her parents die. She just wants to play Magic Kingdom and pretend that she has magic. Sulky John Pritkin (six years old) is her initially unwilling accomplice. This is what friendship is made of.





	You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess (baby just say yes)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rageycakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rageycakes/gifts).



Cassie Palmer is four years old when her parents die. Her dad’s boss wants to take her in, but the courts frown upon a mob boss taking an innocent four year old under his wing. So she’s placed in a home for the time being, until another family member can be found or someone’s willing to adopt her. 

It’s in the group home that she meets Pritkin. His name is John, really, but no one calls him that, even at six years old. His father is deemed unfit, and no one seems to know his mother’s name. He’s been in the home for a year and no one seems to want him. 

At first he doesn’t like her at all - it doesn’t phase her. He looks like a mini-prince from the storybooks her mother used to read to her, and she needs someone to play Magic Kingdom with her. 

She needs a prince if she wants to be the Witch Princess. Because magic is cool and she wants to find out if she can learn to turn Tony into a newt. He deserves that. 

Pritkin reads a lot, stories about kings and knights and swords. She’s smart, she can read already. His books don’t have a lot of pictures, but she gets what they’re about. 

“Merlin is my favorite,” she tells him one day, and his eyes are wide. “He has magic.” 

That’s when he tells her about Morgaine, and how she has magic too. Five minutes later, they’re discussing actual spells and sword fights. 

John Pritkin is her best friend. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Cassie Palmer is nine years old when she gets an actual foster family for the very first time. She has scared away the others - she has nightmares and she used to wet the bed. Nobody at the home likes her. They call her a freak, because she knows what people say before they say it. 

Pritkin is the only one who doesn’t make fun of her. He’ll play her warrior Prince when the other kids make her feel stupid and sad, but he likes being the wizard much more. 

When the other children push her around, Pritkin tries to fight them all. The social workers call him “difficult” and “troubled” and “needlessly violent”. They don’t understand that Pritkin has a boatload of issues no one but her ever gets to see. 

She cries when her foster parents take her away from him, scratching at anyone who tries to tear her away. The only thing that calms her is when her best friend hugs her and sneaks her wand into her bag. 

Three weeks later, the foster parents are dead. Cassie knows that Tony is behind it, even though no one will believe her. But she had the dream two whole days before they died. 

Pritkin welcomes her back with a shrug and his makeshift sword at his side. He’s almost twelve now and probably too old for games, but he still knights her as the returning Lady Cassandra. When he pulls her up, a spark of energy runs through them both. 

 

* * *

 

 

When Cassie is twelve, she meets Mircea Basarab. He is an adult in some kind of high position in government, and he takes a little too much interest in her strange dreams and predictions. 

Mr. Basarab makes her feel unsettled, and so Pritkin is by her side whenever he can be. Even though he is only two years older than Cassie, he is already a lot taller than her. She huffs at him when he points that out, and to apologize he makes the marker tattoos on his arms dance for her. 

Pritkin can do things, things that shouldn’t be possible. Just like how her dreams are not supposed to come true. But it’s not just that he seems to have actual magic, it’s that surge of energy she felt for the first time after Tony killed her fosters. 

They’ve figured out that by holding hands, they can give each other energy. Sometimes, when Pritkin gives her enough energy and she concentrates really hard, she can move herself from one side of the room to the other. She calls it shifting - teleportation raises too many eyebrows if people overhear them. And no one else can know. 

The social workers no longer try to keep them apart. They still call them “codependent” a lot, and tell her that Pritkin is bad news, but Cassie Palmer is smart enough to make her own decisions. 

She is relieved when Mr Basarab leaves, and only minutes after his departure she lets Pritkin set fire to the card he gave her. He does it with his powers, so it’s extra cool. Or hot, depending on the definition of the word. 

 

* * *

 

 

They run away for the first time when Cassie is fourteen years old. 

There are rumors of placing Pritkin in a place specifically for “difficult” teenagers, and one night Cassie Dreams of Tony finding her. So they pack their bags secretly, and when Laura reveals where the cash is kept, they have a nice little nest egg. 

Living with Pritkin is… weird. He is sixteen, almost seventeen, and he is almost an adult. Sometimes when he changes clothes in the same room as her it makes her feel funny inside, something she stomps down on with prejudice. Hormones are a terrifying addition to her powers, and over the last few months they’ve already brought more terrifying visions and an unpredictability to the moments in which she can actually use her powers. 

So Pritkin drills her, makes her go with him on his long runs so that she will be strong enough to run away if her powers fail her again. He teaches her all the ways in which people are vulnerable and how to take advantage of her small stature. People will assume her to be weak - she can use that. 

Cassie grows stronger and harder in the year they spend on the run. Pritkin grows something that could almost be a beard - it makes him look older. He really looks like a Warrior Knight now. Still, his eyes always betray him: her prince is still in there somewhere. 

When they’re found, not by Tony but by the authorities, Cassie is powerless to stop them from separating her from her best friend. 

 

* * *

 

 

At age seventeen (and a half) Cassie has given up on the whole foster home thing. She is creepy, still, and Tony will never stop hunting for her. It is safer if no one else cares about her - no one but Pritkin. 

She has not been allowed to see him since they were separated, but she knows that he is okay. Their energies have always been so in tune that she can tell when something is wrong with him, even from miles away. 

When the Dreams tell her that Hell is coming for him, she does whatever she can to warn him. 

It is not enough. 

On her eighteenth birthday, Cassie loses her best friend. The energy under her skin fades, and shifting seems impossible. 

 

* * *

 

 

Cassie Palmer finally sends Tony to jail when she is twenty-one years old. Her magic and her intelligence have given her all the evidence she needs to send him away for a very long time. After the case, she goes into witness protection, ready to spend the rest of her life alone and constantly looking over her shoulder. 

She moves from city to city, never settling down for long. Tony’s men are always after her, and she’s grown more than a little paranoid. The little voice in her head that still sounds like Pritkin tells her that she’s better paranoid then dead. She aches for him to tell her that himself, but she knows that will never happen again. 

In Vegas, she finally feels like she might be home. She senses that there are others like her, and people in this city don’t question strange things too much. They chalk it up to stage magic and too much alcohol and move on without giving it another thought. 

It is a simple existence, and a lonely one. 

Then, she meets him. Tomas. He is kind and soft and gentle, and he needs her help. This time the princess actually gets to save a prince, the way she couldn’t save her Knight. 

Tomas is grateful and he practically worships her. 

So she kisses him once. And there is no energy moving under her skin, just so much pain that she passes out. 

Just days before her twenty-fourth birthday, all hell breaks loose. Literally. 

 

* * *

 

 

Cassie Palmer hates Mircea for tying her to him without her knowledge or her consent. She feels the spell bubbling under her skin whenever he is near, and it often makes her physically sick. 

At almost twenty-four, she’s spent six years without her best friend. The hole has never quite healed, and no vampire claiming to be her mate will fill it. She rejects this spell, and the magic inside of her purrs contently when she breaks every bond between her and the controlling Senate member. 

When Hell breaks loose - quite literally - suddenly shifting seems like the easiest thing in the world. Her energy is boundless, and for the first time she even manages to shift back in time. She resists the temptation to go back six years and find him - the fighting with the vampires and the Circle and anyone else who wants to get involved, that keeps her almost too busy to think. 

Until she finds him, right in the middle of it, armed to the teeth and grinning madly when he sees her. 

“My lady,” he quips while dodging a particularly heinous spell. 

Of course he is fighting on her side - he has been for twenty years now. He looks older, stronger, more haunted. Even his eyes aren’t quite the same. But there is still a sword on his belt, and when she holds his hand she can do anything and go anywhere. 

“Pritkin,” she reaches for his hand. 

The second they touch, there is a shift in the battle. His spells flare wider, his movements faster and more lethal - they can win this. She feels the power inside her, desperate to get out and devour their enemies.

It is over quickly, and the second it is she wraps her arms around him and shifts the both of them right into her rooms. She locks the door before he wards it, and then she presses her lips to his. 

She can do anything and everything with her Knight, her Prince, her best friend right by her side. 


End file.
